Should Have Seen it Coming
by smellslikecorruption
Summary: Buffy and Spike play War, and Spike see's meaning in every hand.


AN: written for a prompt about card suites. I use cards in a fortune telling way in the story, so the meanings are listed in order below.

Card key:

Ace of Spades with an Ace of Diamonds- a difficult union

Five of hearts- sorrows, relationship breakdown

Four of hearts- Love and support

Seven of hearts- daydreams, unrealistic expectations

Five of Clubs- petty arguments

Seven of diamonds- consistent effort pays off

Six of hearts- sorrows pass

Two of spades- stalemate

Three of spades- three's a crowd, infidelity

Two of hearts- love is in the air

Joker- Wild card. Unexpected or uncontrollable things may happen.

…..

Drusilla was always superstitious. The stars, the signs, her pixies. The way the planets align means something, the future can be read from the lines on your palm or the cards in your deck, and a vampire must always awake beneath the ground. She relied on tradition and ceremony, the closest thing she had to a religion after Angel destroyed hers on a bleeding pile of nuns.

Spike, on the other hand, has never been superstitious. He's in it for the destruction, not the ceremony. There's death and there's glory, and neither are dependent on some sign from the heavens. But the thing about spending a hundred years with someone, is what you learn from them never really dissipate. Spike will never kill or steal for Drusilla again, but her dress and shoe sizes are tattooed on his brain for all eternity. He knows the names of her sisters, her mother, her uncle. He knows how old she was the first time she had a vision, and he knows the day she died. So really, it's not that surprising that sometimes he wakes up and realizes that it's the Feast of someone or other, or on particularly clear nights he sometimes charts the zodiac across the sky.

Or that he can assign a meaning to every card he sees. It's annoying on poker nights, when his opponents lay down their hands and Spike's first impulse, however brief, is to laugh at the fortunes spread out across the table.

...…

He's sitting on Buffy's living room floor, playing with his lighter, when she grabs a deck of cards from the table and sinks down next to him.

"Wanna play?"

He smirks. "Always."

She blushes, but otherwise ignores him. "What about War?"

"Oh is that what we're calling it now?"

She stares at him and he remembers. With them, it's always war.

"Cut it out, someone will hear you." She whispers, finally.

They're all either asleep or watching infomercials, but he does what she asks anyway. It's been months since they spent this much time together with their clothes on, and he'd forgotten how nice it could be (although it would be even nicer if she'd let him slip his hand into her pants and get her off right under the scoobies' noses).

She deals, they start, and he can't help himself. He starts to read meanings in the cards. So while she plays one game he plays another.

Ace of Spades, Ace of Diamonds. A difficult union, so of course they go to war. One, two, three, and her sorrows trump his support.

The game (battle) goes on, and even the rounds he wins, he loses. Seven of hearts may beat five of clubs, but her petty arguments will wreck his daydreams.

They play round after round. The sun rises, cartoons come on, Tara gets up, muttering about breakfast.

Buffy's winning but when his seven of diamonds comes up against her six of hearts he can't keep a grin from spreading across his face.

Two rounds later and Spike prepares to play his final card. Buffy lays down the Queen of hearts, and he struggles not to roll his eyes. He flips his card over and then they really do roll.

Two of spades. Stalemate.

Buffy scoops it up, giggling, and before they can play again, Richard saunters in and the damned three of spades ruins a perfectly good morning.

…..

He's shuffling a deck to play solitaire, because the suns up and he doesn't have anything better to do, when she bursts through his front door.

"I have to be home soon. I promised Dawn we'd spend the afternoon together. But I needed…"

Needed what? Him? His body? A way to get lost? He doesn't ask, just drops the cards and, reaches for his fly with one hand, her with the other.

She wasn't kidding about being in a hurry. She only stays for twenty minutes, her skirt lifted to her waist, her legs and hands slipping on the forgotten cards, as she rides him hard into the floor. When they've finished she collapses against him and kisses him easily. He spies the two of hearts next to them on the floor, and for a moment he can pretend that they're a real couple, a normal couple. If normal couples made a habit of having sex in graveyards in the middle of the day.

She gets up, peels a card off her shin, hands it to him, and makes her way to the door. He almost asks her if she wants to use his shower, but changes his mind (if she wants to go home reeking of sex and grave dirt, what business is it of his? He is supposed to be evil after all).

He settles for saying, "See you around Slayer."

She looks over her shoulder, her expression unreadable. "Yeah. You will."

She's never promised to come back before, and his heart leaps. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

The door swings shut behind her, and he finally looks down at the card in his hand. The jester's cap is a knife to the gut. How could he have forgotten?

She's a wild card, and he's a fool.


End file.
